Preface by
Progress Publishers

The additional volumes 41. to 45 of the present edition contain the
most important of the new material included in the Fifth Russian
edition of the Collected Works of V. I. Lenin.

Volume 41 contains works written before the Great October Socialist
Revolution, from 1896 to October 1917, which are an essential
supplement to the works published in the respective volumes of the
present edition.

A great part of the volume consists of documents reflecting Lenin's
efforts in creating and strengthening the Bolshevik Party and
working out the ideological and organisational principles, the
programme and the rules of a new type of proletarian party. Among
them are: “Outline of Various Points of the Practical Section
of the Draft Programme”, “Record of Points One and Two
of Plekhanov's First Draft Programme, and Outline of Point One of
the Programme's Theoretical Section”, “Initial Variant
of the Agrarian Section and the Concluding Section of the Draft
Programme”, and Lenin's speeches at the Second Party
Congress. They show that Lenin helped the Iskra Editorial
Board to draft a truly revolutionary programme.

The record of the Second Congress of the League of Russian
Revolutionary Social-Democracy Abroad, the January and June (1904)
sessions of the R.S.D.L.P. Council, “Draft Resolution of the
Majority's Geneva Group”, “Reply to L. Martov”,
“Report on the State of Affairs in the Party”, and
others show Lenin's struggle against the Mensheviks' splitting and
disorganising activity after the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

A large group of documents written by Lenin in connection with the
work of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Congresses of the R.S.D.L.P. is
of great importance for a study of the Party's strategy and tactics
during the first Russian revolution. These documents contain
propositions on the hegemony
of the proletariat, the alliance of the working class and the
peasantry, and the development of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution into a socialist revolution.

Considerable interest attaches to the works connected with the
elaboration of Bolshevik tactics in the Duma (Parliament): the
report and summing-up speech on the report on the election campaign
for the Second Duma and other material of the Second Conference of
the R.S.D.L.P. (the First All-Russia Conference), the articles
“Are the Mensheviks Entitled To Conduct a Policy of Supporting
the Cadets?", “The Third Duma and Social-Democracy”,
“Report to the International Socialist Bureau, 'Elections to
the Fourth Duma'", “The Duma Group and the Majority
Outside”, etc.

A number of works dating from the period of reaction reflect Lenin's
struggle against ideological vacillations and deviations from
Marxism. Lenin waged an implacable struggle against the avowed
opportunists, the Menshevik liquidators, and also against the
“Left” opportunists inside the Bolshevik Party—the
otzovists, the ultimatumists and the Vperyod splinter
group. In addition to the material already published, the volume
contains 14 works by Lenin shedding light on the conference of
Proletary's enlarged Editorial Board which condemned both
liquidationism and otzovism.

The volume gives a fuller picture of the meeting held by members of
the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee in Paris in June 1911. In his
“Report on the State of Affairs in the Party” and
speeches at the meeting, Lenin defined the Party's tasks in the
struggle against the anti-Party groups.

The Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. brought
to a close a long period of struggle against Menshevism. By
expelling the Menshevik liquidators from the Party, it strengthened
the Party as an all-Russia organisation, capable of giving a lead to
the masses in afresh revolutionary upsurge. The volume contains a
number of documents which are of great interest for the study of the
Conference. Among them are: “Report on the Work of the
International Socialist Bureau”, setting out important
propositions on the new epoch, an epoch of socialist revolutions and
“battles against the bourgeoisie”, and on the
consequent sharpening of the struggle between the revolutionary
Social-Democrats and the reformists inside the European socialist
parties, and “Speech on the Organisational Question”,
emphasising the need to strengthen the Party's ties with the masses
and to combine legal and illegal work.

The volume contains Lenin's resolution for the Cracow meeting of the
R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee with Party workers, “On the
Reorganisation and Work of the Pravda Editorial
Board”. This decision shows how the Central Committee, led by
Lenin, gave effective and concrete guidance to Pravda, the
Party's most important legal organ.

In some of his works—"Reply to Liquidators' Article in
Leipziger Volkszeitung”, “Letter to the
Executive of the German Social-Democratic Party”, “On
the Question of the Bureau's Next Steps”, “Russian
Workers and the Inter national”, “How the Liquidators
Are Cheating the Workers”, “Resolution on the
Socialist Bureau's Decision"—Lenin gives a firm rebuff to
attempts by the leaders of the German Social-Democrats and the
Second International to “reconcile” and unite the
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks by liquidating the Bolshevik Party.

Lenin's struggle for Party unity is characterised by the documents
relating to the Fourth Congress of the Social-Democrats of the
Latvian territory: his report and summing-up speech, and the draft
resolution on the attitude of the Social-Democrats of the Latvian
territory to the R.S.D.L.P.

Of the documents supplementing Lenin's elaboration of the national
question, the volume includes: “Theses for a Lecture on the
National Question”, “German Social-Democracy and the
Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, “Note to the
Theses 'Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to
Self—Determination'", “On the Declaration by the Polish
Social-Democrats at the Zimmerwald Conference”, plans of an
unfinished pamphlet, Statistics and Sociology, and
“Speech on the National Question” at the Seventh (April)
All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.).

Lenin urged the need for the workers to struggle against the danger
of the world war which was being prepared by the imperialists of all
countries, and exposed the opportunists who denied that such a
struggle was of any real importance,
an attitude which doomed the workers to a passive stand. He believed
that it was a major task of the revolutionary Social-Democrats to
conduct anti-militarist propaganda and spread the idea of
international solidarity among the working people. This question is
dealt with in the following articles: “Notes to the Resolution
of the Stuttgart Congress on 'Militarism and International
Conflicts'", “Notes to Clara Zetkin's Article 'International
Socialist Congress in Stuttgart'", “Anti-Militarist Propaganda
and Young Socialist Workers' Leagues” and “How the
Socialist-Revolutionaries Write History”.

A number of documents published in the volume relate to the period
of the First World War, namely, “On the Slogan to Transform
the Imperialist War into a Civil War”, “Editorial Note
to the Article 'The Ukraine and the War'", “Draft Point Three
of the Resolution 'The C. O. and the New Paper', Adopted by the
Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. Sections Abroad”, “Draft
Resolution of the International Socialist Women's Conference”,
“Variant of the Draft Resolution of Left-wing Social-Democrats
for the First International Socialist Conference”, “Plan
for a Lecture on 'Two Internationals'", speeches at the Zimmerwald
and Kienthal International Socialist conferences, “Draft
Resolution of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee To Terminate
Publication of the Journal Kommunist”, “Remarks
on an Article about Maximalism” and others. These documents
show the Bolshevik tactics with regard to war, peace and revolution;
they explain the slogan of transforming the imperialist war into a
civil war, and characterise Lenin's activity in rallying the
Left-wing and revolutionary elements within the international
working-class movement round the banner of internationalism, his
struggle against social-chauvinism and Kautskyism (Centrism), and
against the Left-wing opportunist, sectarian stand and splitting
activities of the Bukharin-Pyatakov group.

A number of documents written after the bourgeois-democratic
revolution in Russia in February 1917 contain Lenin's propositions
concerning the Party's attitude to the bourgeois Provisional
Government.

The volume contains material connected with Lenin~ s return from
Switzerland to Russia in April 1917. It will be
recalled that the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois press started a
campaign of slander and harassment over Lenin and the Bolsheviks'
return home across Germany. This is fully exposed in the following:
replies to a correspondent of the newspaper Politiken and
to F. Ström, a spokesman of the Left-wing Swedish
Social-Democrats, the group's communiqué, “Russian
Revolutionaries' Trip Across Germany”, speeches at a
conference with Left-wing Swedish Social- Democrats on March 31
(April 13), at a meeting of the soldiers of an armoured battalion on
April 15 (28), and at a meeting of the soldiers' section of the
Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on April 17
(30), “An Unfinished Autobiography”, etc.

There is also a newspaper report of Lenin's speech upon his arrival
in Petrograd on April 3 (16), 1917, when he addressed workers,
soldiers and sailors in the Finland Station Square from the top of
an armoured car.

Lenin's return, his elaboration of a concrete plan for going over
from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to a socialist revolution,
and the open exposition of his plan in the press and in speeches at
numerous meetings helped to orient the Party towards preparations
for a socialist revolution. A tremendous part in this effort was
played by the Petrograd City and the Seventh All-Russia Party
conferences held in April 1917. Some of Lenin's reports and speeches
at these conferences are published both according to the minutes and
the newspaper reports, which gives a fuller idea of their
content. The volume also contains “Report on the Results of
the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) at a
Meeting of the Petrograd Organisation” on May 8 (21), 1917.

A number of documents in the volume deal with the drafting of the
Party's second programme, which charted the building of a socialist
economy in Russia. Among them are: "Outline of Fifth 'Letter
from Afar'”, “Preliminary Draft Alterations in the
R.S.D.L.P. Party Programme”, which was the basis for
“Proposed Amendments to the Doctrinal, Political and Other
Sections of the Programme” (see Vol. 24, pp. 459-63),
“Report on the Question of Revising the Party Programme”
at the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.),
etc.

The Party's policy on the basic aspects of the revolution, such as
war, peace and the agrarian question, is explained in the
“Speech at a Sitting of the Bolshevik Group of the First
All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies”, “Report on the Current Situation at the
All-Russia Conference of Front and Rear Military Organisations of
the R.S.D.L.P.(B.)", the articles “The Attention of
Comrades!", “Too Gross a Lie”, “On the Grimm
Affair”, “Shame!" and others.

The theses “The Political Situation”, which Lenin wrote
after the July events, were published as an article in the newspaper
Proletarskoye Dyelo, and that was how they appeared in
Volume 25. Here they are given in their original form. They defined
the Party's new tasks and tactics in the changed political
situation. Great interest attaches to the “Letter Over the
Publication of 'Leaflet on the Capture of Riga'", which was
published for the first time in the Fifth Russian edition. Lenin
gives important instructions in the item “On the List of
Candidates for the Constituent Assembly” from his
“Theses for a Report at the October 8 Conference of the
St. Petersburg Organisation, and also for a Resolution and
Instructions to Those Elected to the Party Congress”, part of
which was published in Volume 26. In a letter to Y. M. Sverdlov,
Lenin exposes Kamenev and Zinoviev's strike-breaking behaviour and
voices his confidence in the victory of the revolution.

A considerable part of the documents consists of preparatory
material, such as plans, notes, outlines and theses, which show
Lenin's methods and thoroughness in preparing his works. The plans
of unfinished or unwritten articles, and plans for speeches and
lectures which either have not been recorded, or of which a record
no longer exists, are of great importance, because some of them
contain vital theoretical propositions and characterise the Party's
tasks.

This volume contains 47 of Lenin's works which were first published
in the Fifth Russian edition.